Erik Kandel (1929-) is an Austrian neuroscientist based in the United States, whose studies have been fundamental for the molecular understanding of cognitive processes. For this same work, he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 2000, specifically after investigating learning and memory and their synaptic correlates.
In this article we will see a biography of Eric Kandel as well as some elements of his academic career and his main theoretical proposals.
Eric Kandel: biography of a learning and memory neurologist
Eric Kandel was born in Vienna on November 7, 1929. Together with his mother, Charlotte Zimela, and his father, Hermann Kandel, young Eric left Austria in 1938, after Germany annexed the country in the same year.. In 1939, and under the same context, Eric Kandel, Ludwig (his older brother), and later his parents, moved to Brooklyn, New York, where some of his relatives already lived.
Once established in this city, Eric Kandel began his academic training at Yeshiva of Flatbush and later at Erasmus Hall High School. Years later he joined Harvard University, where he studied a bachelor’s degree in history and literature. Specifically, he was investigating the attitudes of National Socialism in different German writers.
In this context, Kandel encountered the dominant theories of European and North American psychology, an issue that soon led Kandel to redirect his studies. It was the paradigm of. BF Skinner who dominated studies on learning and memory However, Kandel did not agree with defending the strict separation between psychology (the unobservable) and behavior (the observable), which was at the basis of the behavioral psychologist’s proposals.
At the same time but in the opposite direction was another Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, who had studied at the beginning of his career the neurological root of conflicts and psychic activity, according to psychoanalysis with Freudian roots. Also influenced by Ana Kris, who had also emigrated from Vienna along with her psychoanalyst parents, Erik Kandel became significantly interested in studying psychology from this paradigm.
First studies in psychoanalysis and the neurophysiology laboratory
The easiest way to become a professional as a psychoanalyst at this time was to study physics and later psychiatry. So, Kandel enrolled in a chemistry course and later enrolled at NYU Medical School. After receiving this training, and in the course of his preparation as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Erik Kandel became significantly interested in understand the biological bases of the mind
This led him to collaborate with Wade Marshall, who was one of the most recognized young scientists in brain studies in the United States. Together with other neurologists, Marshall had systematized the first paradigm of the neural representation in the brain of a sensory system. These studies represented the first significant proposal on the existence of topographical and systematic maps on the sensory surface of touch, vision and hearing
In this context, for Eric Kandel it was not only interesting to investigate problems in psychiatry and psychoanalysis in biological terms, but also to find the cellular and molecular mechanisms of complex processes such as learning and memory.
The biology of memory
During his career, Eric Kandel has studied the cellular structure of the hippocampus and, from there, he has proposed theories about the biology of memory. Not only that but, together with the works of Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard, who have explained the mechanism of action of dopamine and other neurotransmitters, Erik Kandel proposed molecular action systems of learning and memory.
These studies earned these three researchers the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology of the year 2000. Furthermore, these are studies that have had an important impact on the explanations of brain activity in different disorders such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, depression, schizophrenia, among others. This is one of the most important contributions of the 20th century, a time in which neuroscience and the study of the synapse have been of special relevance.
Kandel’s studies have been carried out with different animal species, both vertebrates and invertebrates, and his results have been applied to the understanding of human beings. Kandel suggests that memory is located in synapses, therefore, changes in their function are determining factors in the consolidation, loss and structuring of memory, and consequently, learning. Specifically, through this, long-term synaptic alterations have been studied as well as possible strategies to reverse them.
Eric Kandel is currently a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a member of the Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and has been director of the department of neuroscience at Columbia University.
